Case Study – Henry Street Settlement

Founded in 1893, Henry Street Settlement is a non-profit that delivers a wide range of social services, arts, and health care programs to more than 50,000 New Yorkers every year.

In March 2012, Henry Street was selected to compete against 39 other NYC historic sites for a $250,000 grant from Partners In Preservation & American Express. Grant money would be awarded on the merit of a popular online vote and social media campaign.

Henry Street tapped Vulture Social to run their social media campaign. Since most of the marketing budget was reserved for putting together a block party event, we focused on educating and engaging the existing audience and organically growing social media communities. Because voting took place on Facebook and each user could vote daily, we focused our efforts on Facebook and Twitter.

Vulture Social created custom Facebook tabs and landing pages introducing the competition and highlighting original content. We also produced eight short videos that featured different services Henry Street offered. The videos created engaging original content online and provided tremendous SEO with several videos ranking on page 1 Google for various keyword phrases.

In four weeks, Facebook audiences organically grew by 19% and Twitter by 41%. Henry Street missed winning the popular vote by tenths of a percent. Henry Street won in the second round and was awarded a $175,000 grant beating out organizations such as the Guggenheim and the Apollo.